April Socialist Voice

April Socialist Voice out now!!!!!

http://www.communistpartyofireland.ie/sv/index.html

Contents:

• Legal attack on SIPTU is a warning to unions [NOM]

At the same time, capitalist shock-troops are using different negotiating tactics: force and intimidation. On the one hand, employers’ organisations have been leaking stories about pay increases; however, they want the “pay increases” to come from a reduction in tax. In other words, everyone finances pay increases for employers, so they increase their profits, and there is a further reduction in public services.

• Irish trade unions: A rump clinging to the coat-tails of a future “partnership”? [NC]

Recent media reports suggest that, with a supposed “recovery” on the horizon, employers and unions are increasingly making noises about a return to some sort of partnership structure. The leadership of the unions, most notably Jack O’Connor and Shay Cody, have raised the idea of reconstituting some type of formal Employer-Labour Conference.

• US terrorism condemned [BO]

The offices of the Law Society in Chancery Lane, London, were the venue for the International Commission of Inquiry into the Case of the Cuban Five; but the British government sought to scupper the event before it even began.

• Beyond the media-friendly soundbites [PD]

On the 19th and 20th of December last the European Council met; and to anyone who thinks that the EU is a benign body of people seeking to ease travel for all its citizens, and various other media-friendly soundbites, you are wrong—very wrong.

• Trade in the euro area, 2010–2015 [KC]

There was a major increase in the annual surpluses of the surplus countries between 2000 and 2009 and between 2010 and 2015, as can be seen in table 1. The mean for the countries was up from 4.2 to 6.8 per cent.

• “Industrial civilisation headed for collapse” [EON]

Did anyone read about the study partly funded by NASA that says “industrial civilisation is headed for irreversible collapse”? It was reported in the Guardian (London) in March.*

• TEEU strategic action rolls on!

Following the threatened national dispute in the electrical contracting industry that prevented, once again, an attempt to cut the wages of electricians, the Technical, Engineering and Electrical Union has employed significant resources to sustain the terms of the National Collective Agreement, formally registered with the Labour Court.

• Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie [TMK]

Enda Kenny has lost control of his government, and of his party, and now even his own position may be in question. The wretched man is thrashing around in despair as his government lurches aimlessly from one mishap to another.

• Political statement

At its recent meeting the National Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Ireland discussed the political and economic situation throughout the country.

• Psalm 5 (a paraphrase) [Ernesto Cardenal]

Give ear to my words, O Lord
Hearken unto my moaning
Pay heed to my protest

• Liberal imperialism: The freedom to plunder [NL]

“What is needed then is a new kind of imperialism, one acceptable to a world of human rights and cosmopolitan values. We can already discern its outline: an imperialism which, like all imperialism, aims to bring order and organisation but which rests today on the voluntary principle.”

• Shakespeare at 450: An undiminished message [JF]

This month we celebrate the 450th anniversary of the birth of Shakespeare. When Shakespeare wrote his great tragedies—yes, the ones studied at school, year in, year out—he had a very great and grave concern at heart.

• Are you going to the pictures? [RCN]

Missing from many left-wing critiques of transnational corporations is the part played by cinema. We read daily about the depredations of the oil, financial and media giants. In Towards a Third Cinema by Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino the cinema is described as “the most valuable tool of communication of our times.”